St George Illawarra ground out their sixth successive victory and sent North Queensland crashing to their sixth straight defeat, beating the Cowboys 34-14 in Wollongong on Saturday evening.

Centre Matt Cooper ran in three tries against a Cowboys outfit which has not tasted victory since a 22-6 home win over Penrith on May 6.

Their loss leaves them on the brink of crashing out of the top eight for the first time this season, although Wests Tigers failed to displace them with an upset 24-20 defeat to Penrith.

Canberra however can leapfrog the Cowboys if they beat the Sydney Roosters in Canberra tomorrow.

"We started pretty slowly again and we can't afford to do that anymore," said Dragons prop Luke Bailey.

"But we came away with a gutsy win. I think Benny Hornby described it as a second-gear win, you know, we didn't get out of second gear. It's a tough one but it's a win."

The Cowboys played without confidence but the scoreline flattered the Dragons, who made plenty of mistakes, particularly in the first half.

They raced to a 10-0 lead after 15 minutes with tries to Mark Gasnier and Colin Best.

Full-back Ben Hornby broke away down the touchline before passing inside to Gasnier, who raced 60 metres, putting a big step on Johanathan Thurston to win the race to the line.

Best profited from a Mathew Head crossfield kick which took a wicked bounce, giving Cowboys winger Neil Sweeney no chance.

But the Cowboys rebounded with two tries of their own in the space of three minutes.

First, Matt Sing pounced on a loose ball in the in-goal area, and then Josh Hannay busted his way through some poor Dragons defence to score, leaving the Cowboys trailing only 10-8 at half-time.

Thurston then levelled the scores with a penalty goal early in the second half before the Dragons pulled away once again when Cooper showed a clean pair of heels to the Cowboys defence to score in the left corner.

North Queensland however refused to lie down and Sweeney took a Thurston chip kick to dot down.

The result looked destined to go against the Cowboys though when Thurston's conversion attempt hit the upright, and so it proved with St George Illawarra turning it on late.

Gorrell cleaned up an in-goal knock-on from Travis Norton to score a deserved four-pointer before Cooper completed his hat-trick with tries in the 74th and 80th minutes.